The First Billion (18 page)

“I’ll do my best,” said DiGenovese, rising from his chair and striding to a bookshelf. Between legal tomes and hefty accounting manuals, room had been cleared for a changing pad, a stack of diapers, and wipes.

“Gavallan’s company has hit the skids,” he began, pacing slowly, using his hands effectively. “Three years ago, he was on his way to joining the big boys; now he’s treading water while guys are passing him left and right. In the last nine months, he’s made three infusions of cash into the company to counter quarterly losses and keep his underwriting status with the SEC. Around twenty million and change if I’m not mistaken. The banking records we subpoenaed show he hasn’t taken any salary in six months. Bottom line: The guy’s hurting and he needs a savior.”

“If I might interject. Black Jet was hardly the only company interested in Mercury. All the big-name firms were courting Kirov. Any of them would have jumped at the chance to take his company public.”

“And loan him the fifty million to boot?”

“It
is
a bank’s business last time I checked,” said Dodson.

DiGenovese grinned madly, the cat who’d swallowed the canary. “Thank you, sir. You just made my case. If anyone would have loaned Kirov the dough, why did Kirov choose Black Jet over so many larger, more prestigious firms—the Merrills and Lehmans of this world? Gavallan’s never done a deal in Russia. He’s never done an IPO valued at more than a billion dollars. Now, all of a sudden he’s taking a Russian company public for two billion. By what stroke of good fortune did Kirov fall into his lap? Let me tell you. Because Gavallan’s the only one desperate enough to overlook all of Mercury’s shortcomings. Because he and Kirov are thick as thieves in this thing. Because both of them are dying to pull this deal off.”

“Dear me, you are drawing a picture of a very cold man. Not exactly the type I’d bet on to donate twenty million to a children’s hospital.”

“Window dressing,” declared DiGenovese. He’d unbuttoned his jacket and was stalking the room like a wolf in his den. “So far he’s given two mil, and he’s a month late on this year’s pledge. Five’ll get you ten he never delivers.” Abruptly, he stopped his pacing and thrust his hands on Dodson’s desk, his peasant’s jaw jutting forward. “Mercury’s a phony, sir. Kirov’s got it dolled up to look like AOL when it’s really CompuServe. Gavallan’s in bed with him, and together they’re going to pull the wool over investors’ eyes and pocket the takings. You see what he’s pulling down on fees for this deal? Something like seventy million dollars? Seventy
million
!”

“My, my, Roy,” drawled Dodson appreciatively. “That would make Mr. Gavallan even more ambitious than you. Isn’t that a scary thought? One thing is for certain: Mr. Gavallan’s not in this alone. In the first place, Black Jet didn’t even do all of the due diligence on this thing. I don’t know how many lawyers and accountants and consultants he had signing off on Mercury, but believe me it was a lot. You saying they’re part of this, too?”

“Never know.”

Dodson nudged his glasses to the end of his nose. “Quite a conspiracy you’re cooking up, Roy. Seen any Kennedys flitting around out there in never-never land? Or just Peter Pan and Jett Gavallan?”

Rummaging in his ashtray for a rubber band or two, he wrapped them around his index and middle fingers and, kicking his feet up onto the desk, began to spin the bands forward and back. He liked the bent of the argument, if he wasn’t convinced of its veracity. He thought of the transfer to Mexico City, the traffic, the bad water, the horrid food—
enchiladas,
Heaven forbid—and came to a quick and rational decision that the American angle was just what they needed to drum some new life into the investigation.

A billion-dollar fraud involving a Russian oligarch, a former fighter pilot, and that holy of all holies, the New York Stock Exchange. It was practically treason. He caught himself thinking that the press would have a field day and the man who put Jett Gavallan behind bars would be instantly famous. He stopped himself there. All the infighting, posturing, and backbiting were getting to him. Still, for a last second he couldn’t help but imagine that the man who put Gavallan behind bars would have a south-facing office and the promotion to assistant director that came with it.

Rising from his desk, Howell Dodson strode to the window. The harsh glare showed off wrinkles near the eyes normally unseen, a determined cast to the jaw, and a nasty downturn of his pale, fleshy lips. Suddenly, he didn’t look so boyish anymore, not every inch the amiable Southern gentleman he pretended to be. Get close enough to any man, he would say, and you could glimpse his true nature. And underneath his easygoing drawl and unflappable smile, Howell Dodson was a nasty sumbitch who did not like to get beaten.

Just then, the cries of his two baby boys exploded from down the hallway. A moment later, a trim, very blond woman bustled through the door, a wailing infant in each arm. Rushing to greet his wife and sons, Dodson softened his expression into a broad smile.

“Hello, Jefferson. Hello, Davis. And how are my two little generals this mornin’?”

21

A momentary lull had descended on the trading floor at Black Jet Securities. Phones had stopped ringing—or blinking, as has become their convention—conversation had fallen to a whisper, the shuttle of chairs to and fro between desks had come to a halt. “A rest between rounds,” Gavallan liked to call it on good days. Or “the calm before the storm” on bad ones.

Incisex stock had begun trading on Nasdaq—the National Association of Securities Dealers’ Automated Quotation System—thirty minutes earlier at 6:55. Ticker symbol CSXI—pronounced “sexy”—Incisex was a pioneer in the field of nanotechnology, the branch of science concerned with building sophisticated engineering devices—engines, motors, valves—on a submicron scale. The company’s breakthrough product was a battery-powered valve no bigger than the head of a needle that when surgically implanted into a coronary artery restored proper blood flow to the heart. For men and women suffering from arteriosclerosis or any vasocirculatory problems (and for their cardiologists), it was a godsend. The IPO would net Incisex seventy-five million dollars, funds it would use to move into larger facilities and to upgrade its research and development efforts. Black Jet’s fee was the standard 7 percent of the offering.

“Seventeen bid, seventeen and a quarter ask,” announced Bruce Jay Tustin from his post behind a dozen color screens and monitors. “We’re going up, up, up!”

The issue had been priced at $14 a share and after thirty minutes of trading, demand had lifted the shares 20-odd percent to $17. Checking a screen above Tustin’s shoulder, Gavallan saw that buyers outnumbered sellers three to one. It was a far cry from the bonanza days when one new issue after another would double or triple on its first day of trading, but Gavallan wasn’t complaining. In a rational world, a first day’s gain of 20 percent qualified Incisex stock as “popping” all the same.

“I think we can open the champagne now,” he said to an assembly of four men and two women standing to one side of the room. “Mr. Kwok, would you do the honors?”

On cue, Wing Wu Kwok, a newly hatched associate who had accompanied the Incisex brain trust on their two-week road show across America, uncorked a bottle of Moët & Chandon, filled a half dozen flutes, and offered round a silver tray bearing beluga caviar, toast points, and china dishes brimming with chopped egg white and diced onion.

Gavallan accepted a glass of bubbly and raised it high. “To Incisex and that rarest of all marriages—profit and the public good. Cheers!”

There were huzzahs all around. Hugs and handshakes followed the clinking of glasses.

“May the sun be ever in your eyes,” Tustin chimed in, “and the wind at your ass.”

“Here, here.” Gavallan managed a smile, but just barely. Two hours’ sleep had left him exhausted and haggard. With Grafton Byrnes’s predicament increasingly weighing on him, it was difficult to maintain a cheerful façade. If no one had remarked upon the dark circles beneath his eyes, it was only because he was the boss.

For a few minutes, he mingled with the executives from Incisex, taking refuge from his worry in the cloak of chief executive. He slapped some backs, he partook of the caviar, he extolled his clients’ rosy future. But even as half his mind concentrated on projecting a carefree exterior, the other half remained fraught with doubt. Two words from his best friend had turned Cate Magnus’s hotly worded suspicions about Kirov and Mercury into Gavallan’s worst nightmare.

“Everything’s copacetic.”

Gavallan had to imagine the rest. Grafton Byrnes was being held against his will somewhere in Russia and would never return. He knew too much. He was sure to be killed, if he wasn’t dead already. It was all that simple. That terrible.

Pondering his conclusions, a new thought dawned on Gavallan, one that his trusting mind decided was more frightening than the rest. If Kirov felt so secure that the Mercury offering would come to market that he would risk kidnapping Byrnes, he had to have someone in place at Black Jet to push through the offering despite the chairman’s opposition, someone highly enough placed in the company that he might persuade Jett that Byrnes’s disappearance was a coincidence, nothing more.

As quickly as it had come, the lull on the trading floor abated. Lights began flashing on the checkerboard consoles that connected Black Jet to over a hundred banks, brokerages, and financial institutions around the world. Voices boomed as traders greeted their clients with news of the strong offering. Casters groaned as the bankers recommenced their daylong jitterbug.

The trading room of Black Jet occupied the entire western length of the fortieth floor. Desks ran perpendicular to floor-to-ceiling windows, twelve carrier decks bisected by a flight tower constructed from the newest in flat-screen monitors. Currencies were to the left of the room, followed by bonds, options, and finally, equities, both domestic and international. Chairs were situated at four-foot intervals and nearly every post was occupied by a man or woman, standing, seated, or in some pose in between. One hundred forty traders in all, and when things heated up, the place took on the frenetic currents of a Middle Eastern bazaar. It was the Casbah gone California, Evian and Odwallah replacing hookahs and hashish.

Gavallan leaned a hand on Tustin’s desk, marveling at his ability to goad the price of the stock ever higher. Picking up a receiver, he patched himself into Tustin’s call.

“Hey, Brucie, what d’ya got for me on Incisex?” The voice belonged to Frank MacMurray, a trader at Merrill Lynch.

“Her name’s ‘sexy’ and I can give you a block of ten thousand at 18.”

“Eighteen? Last bid’s 17
¹
⁄
₂
. Gimme a break.”

“Got ten other johns lined up right behind you, Frankie,” Tustin said. “But listen, pal, since you’re cute, I’ll cut it to 17
⁷
⁄
₈
. Buy or fly.”

“Done, and get me ten more at the same price.”

“You’re filled.”

Tustin aimed a finger at another flashing button, this one connecting him with Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest manager of mutual funds. “Yallo, Charlie, what are you looking for?”

Gavallan knew from reading the “book” that Fidelity was a buyer of Incisex. They’d loved the stock’s story and planned to build a position in it in one of their biotech funds. Accordingly, they’d given an indication they’d take 10 percent of the issue. No one firm would be allotted a full 10 percent of the offering—in this case over five hundred thousand shares. As it was important that Incisex had a broad and liquid market, Black Jet had a duty to sell shares to a great many customers, some of whom were retail brokerages—Merrill Lynch, Paine Webber, Bear Stearns and the like—that would in turn pass on their allotments to their own clients. To say you wanted 10 percent was equivalent to requesting as much of the new issue as Black Jet might give you. Powerhouses like Fidelity, Strong, Janus, and Vanguard couldn’t waste time following small positions in hundreds of stocks. When they committed to a new stock, they expected the issue manager to help them acquire a meaningful stake in the company, somewhere upward of 2 percent of the offering. All through the day, Fidelity would be phoning to buy more shares—especially as the price continued to rise.

“Yo, Brucie, give me everything you got at 18.”

Tustin checked his screens for available shares. Many of Black Jet’s clients had bought the stock not to buy, but to “flip”—that is, to sell after an hour or two with the expectation of making a small, risk-free profit.

“Got you five grand at 18 and another five at 18 and a teeny,” said Tustin. A teeny was a sixteenth of a point. It was Tustin’s job to mark up the stock each time he made a sale as a commission to Black Jet. The amount of his markup depended a lot on how good the client was. In the case of Fidelity, one of the firm’s best clients, he would slap on a sixteenth at most. “And this just in: a block of twenty thousand at 18
³
⁄
₈
. You a buyer?”

“Send ’em over,” said Charlie. “We’re buying and we’re buying big. We’re starting to feel good about this baby.”

Tustin put down the phone, grinning like a madman. “Five days from now, it’ll be Mercury’s turn. Two billion dollars. Oh yeah, we’re hitting the big time!”

“Yeah, Mercury,” said Gavallan, the words stale in his mouth. “Great.”

Tustin stared at him oddly. “You okay, Jett? You look kind of like shit. You go out after the ball last night? It was that Nina, I bet. She looked like a goer. Wearing anything less, they’d have arrested her. You always get the sexy ones. But then, you’re the boss.”

If Tustin was cheeky, it was no more than his usual self. Everyone was in a grand mood since Byrnes had resurfaced; Incisex’s successful launch had capped it. Instinct told Gavallan not to reveal his suspicions about Byrnes’s situation. He’d explained that Graf was remaining in Moscow for the weekend and would be accompanying Konstantin Kirov to New York come Monday. The words “prisoner” or “hostage” never entered the discussion.

“I’ll tell you what Graf’s really doing,” Tustin went on. “He’s shacked up with some Russian babe. I’ve heard they’re lookers over there. Yeah, that’s it. Graf’s getting himself some commie cooze. Probably got a dozen of them in bed with him.”

“Can it, Bruce!” Gavallan barely reined in his outraged voice, infuriated by the insinuation of illicit sex.

But Tustin insisted on going on, his compact figure bouncing up and down in his chair like a jack-in-the-box. “I can see that old fart now. Probably got a club sandwich going, laying there between a blond and a redhead like the filling in an Oreo. Got some pussy in his face and some chick gnawing on his hog. Hoo-yeah! Go, Air Force!”

“I said shut up, Bruce. Now!” Gavallan felt his shoulder tense, his fist bunch up, and he knew that if he didn’t leave this second, he’d either pick up Tustin and chuck him across the room or belt him a good one right in the jaw.

“What crawled up
your
ass and died?” asked Tustin. “Ah, you’re jealous, that’s it. Maybe Nina
didn’t
take such good care of you. No, no, no. I got it. It’s Cate you were after all along. I saw you two, cheek to cheek. You want some of
that
poontang, that it? I’m a sucker for black bush myself. Drives me cra—”

A cord snapped inside Gavallan and he slugged Tustin, a lightning-fast jab to that oh-so-loud mouth. The trader tumbled into his chair, gasping, raising a hand to his bleeding lip. Thankfully, the Incisex crew had moved down a few aisles and were talking to Mr. Kwok about a listing on foreign exchanges; only the traders in the vicinity saw what happened. For a few seconds, they froze, no one speaking or moving a muscle. Just as quickly, they discounted the act and continued with their work. The expressions on their faces said Tustin had been due a spanking.

“Sorry, man,” squealed Tustin, dabbing at his swollen lip. “I was just joking. Really, Jett. No offense, man.”

“Damn you, Bruce,” whispered Gavallan, sitting down, lowering his head next to Tustin’s. “Why can’t you just learn to shut up once in a while? Shit. I’m the one who’s sorry. I apologize. I was out of line.”

And looking into Tustin’s pained eyes, he asked himself,
Is it you, Bruce? Has Kirov got his hooks in you?

Just then, Tustin’s private line rang. Gavallan grabbed the phone. “Hello . . . Yeah, Emerald.”

“Jett, I’ve got a caller who says he has to speak to you right away. He says his name is Jason. He won’t give me his last name, but he insists you know him and that it’s urgent. Should I send the call down or do you want me to take a message?”

“Tell him I’ll be right up. Pass it through to my office.” Gavallan handed the phone back to Tustin, a surge of adrenaline making his feet antsy. “Make my good-byes for me. I’ve got to run. . . . I’m sorry, man.”

Two minutes later, he was upstairs, standing beside his desk. Spotting the shaman, he offered the crude, powerful statue a hopeful nod before picking up the phone.

“Jason, that you?”

“Guess what,” said Jason Vann. “Good news. Got a pen handy?”

“Shoot.” Gavallan scribbled furiously as Jason Vann rattled off the name, address, phone number, and E-mail of the Private Eye-PO. Gavallan read the name a second time and smirked. “You sure this is the guy?”

“I’m sure that the web page dissing your company originated from his home address. Maybe he’s got a kid who’s doing it, but I doubt it.”

“Why’s that?”

“Umm, you’re still going to wire me the other fifty thousand dollars, aren’t you?”

“Deal’s a deal, Jason. I always keep my word.”

“Well,” said Vann. “It just seems like something this guy might do. You see, I found out a little more about him than you asked. Sometimes I get a little too interested in my work. Occupational hazard.”

“Do you now?” Gavallan doubted that Vann knew more about the Private Eye-PO than he did.

“First off, this guy’s no dummy. He went to college at M.I.T., then worked for Synertel in Milpitas. He was a big shot. The CTO. But that’s not the good stuff. You see, your guy has himself a criminal record. When the company flamed out, he lost it and beat the crap out of the chief executive, before trying to burn down the building. He did nine months in Soledad Medium Security Correctional Facility for Men in California. I guess that explains why he didn’t tell anyone his name.”

“Guess so,” said Gavallan, amazed at all you could find out in the space of twenty-two hours if you knew how and where to look.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get his picture for you,” said Jason Vann. “The Department of Motor Vehicles’ mainframe has a decent security system. Not that I couldn’t have hacked it, but you sounded rushed so I thought I’d stick with the basics.”

“No need,” said Gavallan. He had a pretty good recollection of what the Private Eye-PO looked like. “Got anything else up your sleeve?”

“Uh, there is one more thing. I hope you don’t think me out of place, but I thought I might be able to do you a favor.”

“A favor? What do you have in mind?”

“Well, I kind of found out you were in the Air Force and that things didn’t go so well for you. You sound like a nice guy—I mean you paid me quicker than anybody else has before—so I just wanted to say that if you ever wanted me to upgrade your discharge, you know, to an honorable one, I can.”